Bloodstream
by ZannieLux
Summary: Thea Collins has no one but herself to blame when she gets tangled up in a case with a grieving family member that trusts her too much, and a young agent who doesn't trust her at all.


_**Bloodstream**_

_**By Zannie Lux**_

_**Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine with the exception of a few OC's. All rights of the show Criminal Minds belong to CBS. Also, I am not in any way affiliated or own BBC News or BBC News America.**_

_**Disclaimer 2.0: This is set in-between Seasons 2 & 3.**_

_**Disclaimer 3.0: Enjoy :) **_

Chapter 1

**Reid:**

_Yes, it's true. Yet another case has slipped through the BAU's fingertips, which leads many to wonder: just what kind of people are protecting our country? A team that we have been assured are hard wired for the job, of course. The perfect mixture of brawn and brains. Let me reintroduce you to our leading cast of characters before we get to the plot of this particular case. There's their strong browed leader Aaron Hotchner, the controversial Jason Gideon, the detailed oriented Spencer Reid, the daring Derek Morgan—_

"Reid. Why are you reading that crap?"

Spencer Reid quickly shut the laptop in front of him closed, but too late; Morgan had seen exactly what he was reading. That new trashy gossip site_ dirtybadges_, dedicated to the team, run by _anonymous._

"I don't know," Reid said truthfully. "It's just so..."

"Ridiculous?" Morgan offered. "Phony? Attention seeking? Come on, kid, don't raise the visitor count. You're just encouraging him."

"Or her." Spencer quickly corrected.

"Fine. Or her. Let's be gender neutral and settle for the pronoun of bullshitter."

"Actually, some of the stuff they write is not entirely false...although they did forget that it's _D__octor _Spencer Reid..."

"What was that?"

Spencer shook his head, he realized he had mumbled that last part to himself, but it wasn't so important as to repeat it. He didn't really know the answer to Morgan's question. Only that he couldn't help but click on the tab every morning to check if an update had been posted. "Never mind. It's just fascinating to me. How does this person know so much?"

"I'm sure the real facts come from the news, and the rest is just like I said, bullshit."

Spencer spun in his chair, thinking. Lately, the posts had been getting...more researched. It unsettled him, to have someone not only watching him work but writing about it. With such ruthlessness too. This latest article was not favorable towards anyone on the team. It wasn't a lie, another case _had_ "slipped through their fingers" as anonymous put it. The timing of this whole thing was unnervingly unfortunate, after the year they all had. Not to only know you had not succeeded but for everyone to know too, that was rough. And in these past few months, it felt like it was let down after let down at the BAU.

"Come on gossip girl," Morgan called, pulling Reid out of his head. "Case time."

Reid scrambled up to follow Morgan into the conference room, where they both took their usual seats and turned their attention to Hotchner, who was stalking the room with an even more agitated manner than usual.

"Twins." Hotch started, so over dramatically that Reid's lip twitched in an almost smile. He looked around to see if anyone else found this amusing but was only met with stone faces. "One dead. One alive."

Reid really nearly lost it at that one. He coughed loudly to cover. "Sorry."

Hotch gave him a funny look, but continued with his soap-opera-like speech. "The living one, Remy Stone, contacted us...what would you say, JJ? About a week ago?" Once JJ nodded in agreement, Hotch continued. "_Alice _Stone presumably killed herself on her way home from a mystery outing early in the morning of last June."

"That's nearly a year ago." Morgan interrupted. "There's no way we're going to get traction on this."

"The living Miss Stone sounded desperate. She said she had proof, but the county police dismissed it as an accident. We'll have her in to talk to us later today, to see exactly how useful her evidence is."

Morgan nudged Reid, passing him the file that had been going around. Reid opened the folder, and took a look for himself. He didn't even blink an eye at the gruesome wreck printed on the glossy pages. A teenage girl with a flag of dirty blonde hair was slumping limp in the drivers seat of a small car, her eyes vacant and a very blunt wound decorating the scalp of her forehead where the impact from the crash had made it's fatal strike. The next picture was of the tree the car had run into, a large pine, devastated from the contact. He flipped to another photo of the road. Suicide, by something like this, was extremely rare.

"No tire tracks. She didn't break." He whispered to himself, but of course everyone turned to look at what he might notice next. "Is the sister inferring that this was a staged suicide?"

"Yes, it sounds like it." said Hotch.

"Not easy to do," Emily commented.

The last few photos were odd bits of the scene. Mainly pictures of the destroyed red Toyota and girl. Not easy to do at all, Spencer furrowed his brows. Almost impossible, actually, for someone to stage something like this without any other visible wounds. Besides the blunt trauma to the head, Alice Stone had none.

He closed the folder shut and passed it on to Gideon.

"This looks local," Gideon noted with surprise, eyes scanning the pages. It was very rarely they came across a case in close proximity.

"Outskirts of Richmond actually." Hotch said.

"No kidding," Prentiss said once she got a hold of the photographs. "I drive this route every morning on the way here."

"How old were the girls last June?" asked Morgan.

"They were both eighteen." answered Hotch. "It was the morning of their high school graduation, actually."

"What kind of a student was Alice?" Prentiss frowned.

"I think it's better we let Remy fill in the majority of the details this afternoon." Hotch frowned back. And just like that, the conversation was over and the room was a commencement of the shuffling of papers and scraping of chairs as everyone disembarked to what now looked like a morning full of paperwork.

Reid sighed, standing up; lately most days it felt like a giant frowning match at the BAU, and everyone was fighting for first place.

**Thea:**

Thea reached for her tea that had long gone cold. She closed her browser, which was currently open on Twitter. She had been researching for something. Anything. A blank word page stared back at her, but Thea made no move to fill it. What was taking the press so long? Or had the BAU not found a new case?

The last case, while a complete devastation for most, was a roaring success for Thea. She was getting _good. _Ever since she quit her crappy small mill publishing job (if one was so generous to even call it that; her compensation was so sad,) she had gotten more attention on her writing than ever.

It once again proved just how easy human beings were to figure out. See, Thea realized that human beings were dirty, messy, and morbidly curious creatures. They didn't want a well researched article on the local benefits of pollen, (she had figured that out the hard way.) No, they wanted dirt. They wanted to know what Angelina and Brad were up to. They wanted to know who Leonardo Decaprio was fucking.

Unfortunately for Thea, that market was too saturated already. She could have wrote that Decaprio was dating a goat and not have earned one page click. She had to find something not many journalists would write about. She had to infiltrate somewhere where not many reporters would go. She went as dirty as dirty gets. Murder.

To get the details of a murder was so much harder than to get the details of Fergie's love life. And it could get so depressing. People loved dirty, yes, but not depressing. It was a fine line to walk; but Thea found the rope and now held it firm in her grasp: the BAU team. At first glance, her blog was about murder...but the angle she used was personal. It was not all about the grisly details as much as it was about what people really wanted to hear of: human behavior. Put a crime on the news and it's not the technicalities that get everyone going; it's all about who's involved.

But Thea had to go one step further. It was still too easy for journalists to grasp writing material on the serial killers and victims of these cases, and that market proved almost as fruitless as any other she had been a part of.

Until she found her winning tickets.

Enter Hotchner, Gideon, Morgan, Reid, Garcia, Jareau, and Prentiss.

They kept such a low profile. That was their mistake. The lower the profile, the bigger the mystery. The more room for embellishment. It was so easy to write about this team because no one knew anything about them. No one could even begin to guess.

Enter Thea. Enter an idea. Enter three hours and a well designed webpage titled _dirtybadges._

Admittedly, the name could have used some more work, but it had set off before she could think of changing it.

**Reid:**

The living Stone sister looked exactly like the dead one. The same facial features: modest brown eyes, freckled nose, dimpled chin; framed by the same loose curls of dull blonde. Looking at Remy Stone was like looking at a ghost. Reid remembered the photographs from yesterday—the glazed eyes of the dead twin, the bloodied face and limp neck. Now, sitting across from him, Gideon, and JJ, was seemingly the same girl.

Of course not however the same girl at all.

It made him shift in his chair a whole lot more than usual.

"She was incredibly introverted. Look up the definition in the dictionary, and a picture of Alice would have been smiling up at you. No, actually, she would have been doing her homework or baking a pie, perfect as ever." Remy Stone was saying. "I was always jealous of how she seemed to have everything together"

"So not the sort of girl to have enemies?" Gideon prompted. "No bitter ex-boyfriends you can think of? No severed friendships?"

"Alice had one boyfriend. That I know of. They dated for one week in the eight grade. Her friend group was small but loyal. I can give you their names, although you might freak them out talking to them now. Everyone thinks I'm crazy, like I won't let this go." Remy looked down. Looked back up."I guess they're right."

"You're the last thing from crazy." consulted JJ, doing what JJ did best. Gideon had thought to bring her in to make the girl feel more comfortable with a woman in the room. "Trust me. You are so smart coming to us. Now Hotchner, the man you talked to on the phone, said you had some evidence?

"It took me three months before I could even drive a car again. The first time I drove it, must have been in September. Of course, I did the stupidest thing someone can do in my position: I went back to the scene. It's really far out, about thirty miles from our house and what feels like in the middle of nowhere. I had and still have no idea where she was going that morning and I wanted to find out; to see what was near by. Which is nothing by the way. So, I got out of my car and I just kinda stood there on that highway and I remember wondering what my sister was thinking there and how it just didn't make sense. Alice was not suicidal, and if she was, which she _wasn't, _then why the hell did she go there? Right in that particular spot, right in-between Richmond and nowhere."

"And she was driving towards your house, not away. She was coming back?" said Reid.

"Exactly." Remy said. "Wait, how did you know that?"

"We saw some pictures," Reid said, drawing his lips tight.

"Oh." Remy said. "Well yeah, but that's what I mean by it making zero sense: if her destination was suicide, why did she turn around?"

JJ nodded. "No, this is good. What else do you have?"

"Well, my family never got the car back. It was too damaged, and even if it wasn't...well you know, something like that happening didn't make us want the thing back anyhow, but I wanted to see it. I was obsessed with every detail of her death, so obsessed that I went out into the junk yard place alone. I found the car, and on the back bumper, well here...I took some pictures."

Remy slid the three photographs over to them. All were practically of the same thing, taken at different angles and distances: the back bumper of the gray Subaru.

The room was silent for some odd beats. Gideon leaned in closer. "I'm sorry, but what are we supposed to be looking at, exactly?"

"Right there," Remy's finger pointed to the bottom of the bumper. "See that blue?"

Spencer squinted. JJ scooted her chair closer. Gideon reached for his glasses. Spencer did see it, barely. His heart sank. This was not evidence...this was blind hope. They had seen this type of blind hope in families and friends of victims many times. Quantico's BAU phone lines were riddled with them, all trying, begging, crying for the team to take a look at their case. At their "evidence."

"Okay, I know it's not much. But it was definitely not there before. We used to share a car, I would have noticed it. I played soccer and used the trunk nearly everyday for my gear." Remy pulled the pictures back frantically, clearly embarrassed. "But there's more. Next to the crash site, I found this."

Now, came out the plastic baggy. In it, was a small speck of something red.

"Her nail polish," Remy clarified. "Outside of the car. Quite a ways from the scene actually, a little off to the side. It's hers, it has to be. Not only does it match the color she was wearing but what are the odds that someone else was there and left it behind?"

"Okay, good, good." JJ drawled, and Reid could tell from her tone she was getting more frustrated by the lack of concreteness of the entire thing.

Gideon, on his left, was still squinting at the plastic baggy. "Mind if we keep this?"

"Of course. And the pictures too." Remy slid the photos back over to them, looking bashful. "Sorry for ripping them away like a complete lunatic."

"No worries," Gideon said, bringing the photos to his eyes.

JJ cleared her throat. Spencer nodded at her to continue.

"Alright," JJ said. "Anything else?"

"That's it for the physical stuff." Remy said quickly. "I know it's not much, but if it was not for how Alice was behaving in the months leading up to her death then I would not be questioning this at all. Really."

"How was she behaving?" Gideon leaned forward, placing the pictures back down on the table.

Spencer stole them to get a closer look. Now he could see it better, the speck of blue was more like a line. Multiple lines, actually now that he looked at it longer.

"Like I said, she was the token introvert. She had always been until lately. She started going out on Fridays, sneaking out late, staying out even later. Sometimes I smelled cigarettes on her clothes while doing the laundry, little things like that I noticed all the way until two weeks from what happened. Then she went quiet, back to her old self. In one year she had done two one eighties, and I didn't realize how unusual that all was for Alice until she was gone. I thought she was just hitting her rebellious phase a little late, my friends and I all went through that freshman and sophomore year but Alice never had. I thought she was just getting it all out of her system before college. She was accepted into Penn State. You know, during that entire phase, going out and all, her grades still never slipped and she went to State with her softball team."

"Impressive gal," JJ smiled encouragingly, but Remy was done talking.

"When did she start-" Gideon paused, looking for the word, "changing?"

"Fall of that year. September. The very beginning of the school year."

"Who was she going out with? Anyone you knew? People from school?" Reid interjected, feeling the need to say something. He often had to remind himself to speak up when talking to the family members. Sit there silent for too long, and they would get uncomfortable by his watchful presence. It was all about getting the witness or whoever to feel at ease.

"She said it was people from school, but I never saw them. Those people, whoever they were, would never come over to our house. But I would see her with friends at lunch and just assumed it was them she was spending all that time with."

"And your parents didn't think that was strange?" Gideon prompted.

"No." Remy immediately said. She bit the inside of her cheek.

There was a silence.

"My dad," Remy clarified. "He, um, drank a lot. Especially on the weekends, it wasn't the funnest spot in town."

Gideon frowned. JJ nodded. Spencer didn't know what to do.

With every point that Remy made that was supposed to drive home that her sister didn't commit suicide, did the opposite.

"Listen, my sister wasn't suicidal." Remy shifted her eyes all around the room. She was not afraid to make direct eye contact, and that showed Spencer the earnestness of her points. "I know that's not what you're looking to hear, but I know it's the truth."

That was admirable, Spencer had to give it to her, not backing down. But the facts were facts and these were not facts. These were claims made by a grieving sister, desperate to see her twin in a light that didn't involve suicide.

Remy, once again, took turns looking them all in the face. She was not a stupid girl. "This isn't looking good, is it?"

No, Spencer agreed, it was not looking good.

**Thea:**

Still nothing. This was the longest period of nothing Thea had since she started her blog seventy two days ago. Seven weeks had flown by on full blast. Four cases were solved, two were not. Six click-able tabs existed on her website, each labeled with a witty name she had come up with for every case. Each tab, with it's designated name, had three different blog posts: the exposition, the chase, and finally the resolution. So basically, like a well structured novel. The last case had been the most popular one yet, topping in at nearly 200,000 views. Thea understood the popularity quite well: success was not as appealing to people as failure. Human nature is what made people love seeing others fail. And when the BAU failed, Thea succeeded.

It was a sick ride.

That had now come full stop.

Why the hell did no news of a new case break? Were the sickos of the world on vacation? Did they set a date like "Okay guys, May 20th through 27th let's just take it easy. Get our zen back, get inspired, just relax. And then we'll come at them full force. Alright, have fun. Say hi to your wife and kids for me."

Thea rolled over in her bed. It was nearly two in the morning and all she could think about was murder. Was there one happening right now? Would she be able to write about it tomorrow? The TV softly hummed in the background, the news is what usually lolled her to sleep, but today it was rather the opposite. She was afraid to go to bed in fear of missing the first break of a case.

Yes, it was a sick ride indeed.

A ding game from her desktop, signaling an incoming email. Curiosity overwhelming desire to pass out, Thea stumbled past furniture to get to her desk. She pressed a key to bring her loved device to life, and reached for her glasses. The bright light swarmed the room as the machine woke up and Thea groaned, barricading her eyes with an arm.

Once her irises had somewhat adjusted, she opened up the new message titled: _ Regarding Your Work._ The sent from address was Petra Maddox, and the email handle was BBC News America. Thea's heart beat a little faster, okay, a lot faster as she opened the email.

_Dear 'Anonymous,"_

_I have been up reading your blog all night, and apologize for sending this email at such an unprofessional hour. Excuse me when I continue to do something equally, if not more unprofessional when I say: holy shit, your website is fantastic. I'm afraid I might not be able to reach you, as the blog is anonymous, but hopefully the email you provided works. If this does get through, it would be an honor to invite you to write for our website as an online contributor. I already have a vision for what the page layout could look like, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. First, I will be waiting for your acceptance or denial. Either way, letting me know as soon as possible would be fabulous._

_Petra Maddox_

_BBC News America and Canada_

_(745)884-1111_

_petramaddox bbcnews_

"Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh," Thea breathed as she quickly started up Google and typed in Petra Maddox into the engine. Once good old Google proved that Petra was in fact the CEO, Thea properly dedicated herself to a full out freak-out. "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD."

She took a minute to get up and do a small (embarrassingly big) victory dance before plopping back down into her chair. She had gotten professional offers before, of course she had, but this was big. This was huge. This was freaking BBC News! Thea grinned as she sent an email back.

_Hello,_

_Thank you so much for this opportunity and let me just get this out of the way and say yes. If an interview is required I would be happy to present myself anywhere. By the way, my name is Thea Collins. I am a 23 year old freelancer, working from home. I can also send a resume over if needed, which has all of my credentials.  
><em>

_Once again, thank you,_

_Thea Collins._

Okay, it came_ o_ff as a little bit desperate but Thea had pressed send before her anxious mind could nitpick the different wording possibilities of this very important email. Thankfully, she didn't have to wait very long to dwell on her response. A new email popped up nearly right away.

_Thea,_

_Great!_

_I would love to chat with you on the phone. Maybe at a more decent hour tomorrow. Just let me know when will work for you. Additionally, and if it were up to me you would bypass this, but we are going to need an unpublished piece from you. Something that you're working on right now (which I assume you are, no rest for the wicked in this field, right?) It's company policy that we always test out a writers work first on our website to see how it does. In this case, I already know it's going to be big. Still, we will need the piece sent in by a deadline. We can talk about that deadline over the phone tomorrow._

_Petra Maddox_

_BBC News America and Canada_

_(745)884-1111_

_petramaddox bbcnews_

Thea shut her eyes and breathed out through her nose. She knew it was too good to be true, and this test article had just shot down all of the butterflies that had danced out of her chest minutes ago. Deadline, the word loomed in her mind. She felt the suffocating stress of being back at her old job again. There's a reason the word dead is in deadline, Thea thought.

She wanted to establish a deadline now. She didn't want to come off as panicked over the phone as they discussed possibilities. She wanted to get to work right away, and give herself her own pace. No, Thea prepped her hands on the keyboard, this was not going to be like her last job. _They want me. _And I want at least two weeks.

With her two week deadline proposal sent, Thea reached for her remote, shutting off the TV. Her head was reeling so much that Thea knew she wouldn't be able to focus on what the anchorwoman had to say anyways. She stood up and began to clean her room as she waited for the response, just to keep herself busy. Suddenly the stakes felt so much higher, but Thea wasn't in favor of anxiety eating her up tonight. She had to occupy her brain until-

_Ding._

Thea nearly tripped on her way over to the desktop.

_Thea,_

_Two weeks sounds great! Will talk more tomorrow; how is eleven tomorrow morning for you?_

_Petra Maddox_

_BBC News America and Canada_

_(745)884-1111_

_petramaddox bbcnews_

Thea sat down in her chair, and poised her hands on the keyboard to reply. As she wrote out the email saying that yes, eleven sounded perfect, she couldn't help but feel as if she was drilling in the last screw on her coffin. She suddenly regretted saying yes so quickly. Maybe she could still go back, tell Petra Maddox how sorry she was and _no no no, stop it Thea. You have not come this far to back out now._

She thought of her parents.

She thought of her brother.

She thought of herself.

She hit send.

x

x

x

x

_**Alrighty, so my first time writing a Criminal Minds fic. I hope I gave the characters justice. This story is gonna be a wild ride, let me tell you. I have plans. Big plans. It is Reid/OC pairing and Reid centric, so there's that warning. Also, it heavily focuses on crime. I mean, there's definitely going to be relationship stuff in there, but be prepared for the dark stuff. So if that sounds like your cup of tea, buckle up.**_

_**Thanks for reading and reviewing would just mean the world to me :)**_

_**-Alexis**_


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